The Government has set out a series of actions and plans that it will implement to accelerate technology and innovation in the country amidst the novel coronavirus pandemic, or COVID-19.
In an economic recovery plan approved by the cabinet recently, the government said it will increase spending on digital infrastructure, adopt data-driven approaches in response to economic recovery interventions, and leverage technology solutions to inform Covid19 containment strategies.
Government intends to improve the quality of mobile broadband services, increase fiber to the home (FTTH) services, particularly the city of Kigali, scale up telemedicine infrastructure, and increase availability of high computing infrastructure and hosting services.
Government is also targeting full implementation of digital identity and trust service, improving cybersecurity resilience across all sectors, as well as on the current systems in the agriculture sector to track food productivity across the whole country.
To promote e-commerce, a plan has been agreed upon to extend waivers for transaction fees to encourage contactless methods of payment, and revise Merchant Discount Rates (MDR) to encourage digital payments adoption.
